Obituary: Norberto Odebrecht, 93, Made His Last Name a Brazilian Institution
Norberto Odebrecht, whose launch, in the 1940s, of a Brazilian construction firm to pay his contractor father's debts grew into a $43-billion global contracting and industrial conglomerate, died on July 19 in Salvador, Brazil.
The engineer, who became the entrepreneurial wizard and later philanthropist behind Odebrecht SA, was 93. The company, of which he had been honorary chairman since 1998, said the cause of death was heart failure.